The decision on reservation to the Maratha community will be hanging fire for at least four months.
Following the death of a 28-year-old youth, which sparked fresh protests across the State, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis urged the Maharashtra State Backward Class Commission to submit, as early as possible, its findings on the possibility of giving the community a reservation. The commission has informed Mr. Fadnavis it will take four months to complete the study of data, demographic numbers before it could submit a report.
“The commission will take another four months to submit the report. Once the report is submitted, we will have to forward it to the High Court. Since it is a statutory commission, we cannot give it a deadline, but only urge them to speed up the process of preparing the report,” Dinesh Waghmare, secretary, social justice and special assistance, told The Hindu.
On Tuesday, the Chief Minister held two back-to-back meetings to take stock of the pending schemes. Sources said most of the schemes promised to fulfil the demands of the community are stuck in implementation stages. As per the data presented to Mr. Fadnavis, under the Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj Shikshan Pratipurti Yojana, 1.58 lakh applications have been received so far. The scheme promises to give scholarships to students. The government has disbursed ₹284 crore to 84,014 applicants, while ₹222 crore is yet to be disbursed to 73,986 applicants.
Under the Dr. Panjabrao Deshmukh Hostel Scheme, which aims to give hostel allowance, ₹32 crore has been disbursed to 10,526 applicants, while 14,772 applications are pending approval. A total of 25,298 applications have been received from Maratha students.
Officials said the CM has directed better publicity to most of the schemes, especially the personal loan interest refund scheme, group project loan interest refund scheme, group project loan scheme, and the Shetkari Kushal Yojana, which provide financial assistance to economically-backward entrepreneurs.
Of the 11,555 letters of interest issued under the interest subvention scheme, only 13 persons have been given a loan of ₹13.3 crore.
“Of them, an interest subvention has been given to only eight persons. The issue is that people from the community are not coming forward,” a senior official said.
Source said the government is also going to knock on the doors of financial institutions willing to give a credit guarantee for loans to entrepreneurs from the Maratha community. The group credit subvention has only been given to 19 applicants while subvention to farm organisation has been provided to just 10 applicants. But these too have not been processed at all. “We will have to soon resolve all these issues in the light of the unrest in the community,” the official said.